South San Francisco will get 31 new surveillance cameras to be placed along Highway 101 and Interstate 280 following an unanimous vote from the City Council approving the new law enforcement measure.

The cameras, called automated license plate readers, have been increasingly installed in the Bay Area with several Peninsula cities recently approving their use. By capturing images of passing vehicles and logging plate numbers, make and color, the technology can alert nearby officers if a vehicle suspected of being involved in a crime is spotted. Officers can also access data after the fact to aid in police work.

“This is the world we are living in,” Council member Mark Addiego said. “It’s horrifying when you read reports about how many people are coming into our city and quite frankly just raising hell.”

The city first looked into adding the cameras last year, citing an uptick in crime near hotels, particularly “smash-and-grab” car break-ins. Councilmember Eddie Flores also voiced concern regarding highway shootings, citing those that have occurred recently in Oakland.

The technology can be used in instances of crimes from homicide to catalytic converter theft but, unlike red light cameras, would not be used for traffic enforcement.

Despite agreeing the cameras would be useful in fighting crime, council members expressed some hesitation surrounding privacy. The move will establish South San Francisco as the city with the most cameras in the county, which currently has a total of 119.

“I come from a time when George Orwell’s 1984 was required reading,” Addiego said. “Apparently we’re there, and there’s something a little bit disconcerting about that.”

While storage practices differ in other cities, data captured by the cameras would be deleted after 30 days unless part of an investigation, and the city would allow data to be shared with other law enforcement agencies only if requested for an investigation. Sharing data with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be strictly barred.

Per a request from Flores, the program will undergo quarterly audits from an independent party to ensure compliance with the city’s rules. A webpage will also be established allowing members of the public to view the volume of data collected and how often it is being accessed by officers.

“We want to make sure that when we do this, we do it right and don’t produce unintended consequences that we might later regret,” Flores said.

According to City Manager Mike Futrell, the city’s guidelines mirror that of soon-to-be proposed legislation from state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, which aims to curtail ALPR use. Wiener had last year introduced legislation to require data deletion after 24 hours following a report that some agencies were storing data for up to five years and others had shared data with ICE.

Police Chief Scott Campbell noted the technology carries the benefit of allowing for “completely unbiased” police work, allowing officers to react to crime that has already been committed.

The cameras would likely be procured from ALPR operator Flock Safety, at an annual cost of $2,500 per camera, or $77,500 for the whole city. A one-time installation fee of $250 per camera would also be added in the first year.

The city’s immediate neighbors all have cameras installed with the exception of Brisbane. Daly City is the only city in the county where its cameras are affixed to police vehicles rather than fixed locations.

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Megan Potente and Laurance Lem Lee

Special to The Examiner

The initial findings of a much anticipated San Francisco Unified School District curriculum audit were released Tuesday, adding to pressure from parents and educators to change how kids are taught to read. The audit findings point to major deficiencies in the district’s K-5 English language arts curriculum as it is written and observed inside classrooms. Those who have been pushing for change are not surprised by the findings, and are now hopeful that the district will finally acknowledge the deep problems and commit to change.

At public comment during the Monday meeting, parent Havah Kelley said, “Nothing about what I heard today surprises me. … I’ve been trying to help my son for about five years.”

Literacy is the foundation of an equitable education and far too many SFUSD students leave elementary school without achieving their basic right to read. The most recent SFUSD performance data indicate 55% of students do not meet standards in English Language Arts and there are huge gaps in performance between subgroups. Only 20% of Black students, 15% of English learners and 16% of students with disabilities met standards in English Language Arts.

When asked if he was concerned about the state of literacy, SFUSD grandparent Rex Ridgeway responded, “Concerned is an understatement. A better word is ‘distressed.’ Just look at the Reading Test Scores at Bret Harte: 8%, Charles Drew: 19%, El Dorado ES: 11%, Carver ES: 16% and MalcolmX: 23%. It is so obvious that the district has failed those schools and their students.”

The California Reading Report Card ranks districts by 3rd grade reading performance of socioeconomically disadvantaged Latinx students, an “apples to apples” comparison that gives a good picture of how well districts teach reading. SFUSD falls in the bottom 10% of the 287 ranked districts. There are districts with lower funding and higher levels of poverty that have better reading outcomes than SFUSD.

The truth is we know how to teach kids to read, but SFUSD ignores the science and has done so for many years. A vast body of research from many related disciplines, conducted in the US and around the world over five decades, has resulted in an emerging consensus about how learning to read happens and what is going on in the brains of those who struggle. This body of research is commonly referred to as the science of reading and documents what has worked for the largest number of children.

Asked about updates to early reading instruction curricula, Nicole Priestly, SFUSD’s chief academic officer, indicated at that Monday meeting that nothing will change soon, since “some of the curriculums have high marks in some of the areas but not in others. And so that will beg the question of how we might want to make that come together in some form of action. But that’s a question that remains to be seen and we won’t be able to answer that until we actually engage with the materials and perhaps go through the pilot.”

Districts serious about improving literacy implement systems and teaching practices grounded in the research. Recent California success stories, including Lodi Unified and Nystrom Elementary, show how following the evidence scientific improves reading outcomes. In a recent EdSource roundtable on early literacy, Attorney Mark Rosenbaum made the point, “We don’t need a task force. We don’t need more studies. We just need a commitment.”

Indeed, what we need from SFUSD is a commitment to the changes recommended in the curriculum audit. The district maintains a firm grip on a controversial approach widely recognized for failing to meet the needs of many children. SFUSD names its approach the “Comprehensive Approach to Literacy”, which is more commonly referred to in other districts as balanced literacy.

This approach is based on a discredited “whole language” theory debunked decades ago. Balanced literacy teaches kids to guess words using an assortment of cues, like pictures and context, instead of sounding words out. It treats foundational skills haphazardly, without the practice many kids must have in order to learn. Balanced literacy also fails to build the vocabulary and background knowledge necessary for reading comprehension and access to grade-level content.

The most popular balanced literacy curricula used in K-2 SFUSD classrooms, Lucy Calkins Units of Study and Fountas & Pinnell Classroom, are also the most poorly rated on the market. In addition, one expensive intervention program, Reading Recovery, intended to close reading gaps for the lowest performing first grade students, which recently found to actually have a negative impact on reading performance over the long term. This comes as no surprise to those who understand the science of reading and the design of Reading Recovery. Yet instead of moving away from the program, SFUSD is actively hiring new Reading Recovery teachers for the 2022-23 school year.

When we talk to concerned parents about this issue, they usually are dumbfounded. Why doesn’t the district change its ways? Why are they using methods and materials known to fail so many kids? Many parents ask us how they can teach their children to read, because they are not getting what they need at school. And business is booming for private tutoring, which can cost between $100 and $200 per hour session, with three to five sessions per week recommended. Literacy should not be a luxury afforded to those with financial resources or parents who can take on the job of teaching their kids to read.

Many SFUSD teachers, who have faced no shortage of challenges in recent years, are fed up with the district’s early literacy plan. Douglas Rich, a long-time SFUSD literacy specialist, believes the district is dangerously change averse.

“The SFUSD administration is too focused on an outdated and harmful philosophy of teaching and learning,” he said. “They like to talk a lot about their philosophy, but none of that has translated into useful guidance for teachers. I read somewhere that you don’t have to operate out of great malice to do great harm. The absence of understanding is sufficient.”

Megan Potente, M.Ed. is a 20-year elementary school teacher, who worked for many years in SFUSD, is a parent of an SFUSD graduate and serves as co-state director of Decoding Dyslexia CA. Laurance Lem Lee is a second-generation Chinese American, SFUSD graduate, general contractor and good government advocate. You can follow him on Twitter @eyessfboe

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South San Francisco could be the next town in the county to install vehicle security cameras along major traffic arteries in hopes of catching criminals and deterring future crimes, with the city council expressing its approval of the law enforcement tool this week.

Eddie Flores

On Tuesday, a plan was presented to the city council to place 25 cameras, called automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, near entrances and exits along Highway 101 and Interstate 380. The cameras would be able to collect license plates and compare them with a “hot list” of vehicles involved in crime, as well as using artificial intelligence to identify and record vehicle make, model and color.

The proposal to use the technology comes after a surge in crime along the city’s hotel corridor, particularly after “smash-and-grab” car break-ins, city officials said.

“I would definitely like to support them, support the hoteliers and the companies. I think that’s important, ”said Councilor Eddie Flores.

Neighboring cities like Daly City, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo, and others have or are planning to install ALPRs that mount cameras either in fixed locations or on police vehicles.

Despite widespread agreement, council members raised several privacy concerns, including how long data is retained, who can access it, how secure it is, and what is collected.

According to Police Chief Scott Campbell, ALPRs “are not designed to take photos of people,” and the information they collect can only be viewed by law enforcement agencies. The data is stored on encrypted servers for 30 days before being transferred to a Northern California database, where it is stored for a year before being deleted, unless the vehicle is suspected of being involved in a crime, said he.

The whereabouts of vehicles on the “hot list” can be quickly disclosed to nearby officials, said Campbell, who mentioned cases where the technology helped with an arrest.

“The good thing about this technology is that it is completely impartial, it only warns of vehicles that have been involved in crime, and officers have to review this information to make sure the camera isn’t inadvertently wrongly registered,” said Campbell . “It enables the officers to react to this information and to investigate crimes that have already been committed.”

Any outside agency, including Homeland Security or the CIA, would have to request data and it would be up to the city to grant access, he said. And depending on county and state regulations, immigration and customs enforcement would be strictly prohibited, he said.

The cameras would be used in crime cases from killing to catalytic converter theft, but not in “minor crimes,” and unlike red light cameras, they would not be used for monitoring traffic, Campbell said.

Although no cost estimates were provided for South San Francisco, Atherton, who was considering installing cameras in 2019, estimated the cost to be between $ 35,000 and $ 65,000 to equip an intersection with two cameras, excluding maintenance and licensing fees the required software. Foster City, where 20 cameras were recently approved, estimates the annual cost of running its program at $ 50,000.

Piedmont, where five ALPRs are installed, has created a portal for public access to the data collected by the system. It said the cameras collected data on 47,000 cars last month, 79 of which were classified as suspicious of criminals, and 26 of those cars were “searched”.

The cameras, which are increasingly used not only on the peninsula, have been carefully scrutinized by some state legislators who deal with data protection.

Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, drafted a law that year to tighten the ALPR regulations. In addition to restricting the exchange of data, the law, which has been put on hold, would also stipulate the deletion of the recorded data within 24 hours. A state audit commissioned by Wiener found that last year authorities in the country who used the cameras shared data with the police across the country and kept data for more than five years.

Police in Pasadena and Long Beach were found to have shared data collected by ALPR with ICE last year, despite the state protection law and despite the fact that police have made an express commitment not to do so, according to Wiener’s office.

Flores asked city officials to provide additional evidence that if cameras were installed, the data the city was collecting would not be unwittingly shared with anyone. Councilor Buenaflor Nicolas asked whether the companies responsible for keeping the data had ever breached the data and how the city would be liable in this case.

Campbell said he was not aware of any violations and would look into the liability issue.

Further answers to the Council’s questions and additional information will be presented in a public meeting at a later date.

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